In an Iraq that is regaining some semblance of normality after decades of conflict, the Baghdad museum, founded in 1926 to tell 7,000 years of history, has chained closings and reopenings in recent years, depending on the upheavals of the news. policy.

Closed for three years from 2019, due to demonstrations and then the Covid-19 pandemic, the museum reopened in March 2022. It could be visited on weekdays, from Sunday to Thursday, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. , and closed Friday and Saturday.

"From today, the museum will also open every Friday to welcome Iraqi families and tourists free of charge, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.," the director of the Iraqi Council of Antiquities, Laith Majid Hussein, told AFP. in the midst of a flood of visitors.

A room in the Baghdad National Museum, February 24, 2023 © AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP

Friday morning, dozens of Iraqis, who came as a couple, with friends or even as a family with the youngest in strollers, were able to stroll through the galleries of the museum, according to an AFP correspondent.

Some took their picture in front of two lamassu, mythical creature half man half winged bull, discovered on the site of an Assyrian city and dating back to the 8th century BC.

There are also finely carved ivory miniatures, used to decorate palaces and royal furniture, dating from the Neo-Assyrian period (911-612 BC) and found at the site of Nimrod (north).

Ahmed Mozher, a 35-year-old lawyer, came with his wife Farah.

"It's the first time," he admits.

"You feel like you're going back in time seeing such creations, so much civilization, it's an indescribable feeling."

Visit to the Baghdad National Museum, February 24, 2023 © AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP

He is delighted to see families making the trip with their children.

"It is important to teach them this History, so that it is inherited from generation to generation."

Iraq is the cradle of the civilizations of Sumer, Akkad, Babylon and Assyria, to which humanity owes writing and the first cities.

The country suffered from looting and antiquities trafficking, after the American invasion of 2003 and then with the arrival of the Islamic State group.

Queue in front of the Baghdad National Museum, February 24, 2023 © AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP

The Baghdad museum was not spared from looting in 2003, in the chaos that followed the invasion against Saddam Hussein.

Of the 15,000 coins stolen at the time, the authorities were only able to return a third.

Today, despite its decaying infrastructure, Iraq is timidly opening up to world tourism.

© 2023 AFP